St Mary Chamber wants Cuban alliance
Published:Monday | January 6, 2020 | 12:37 AM
President of the St Mary Chamber of Commerce, Frederick Young, says his organisation will be seeking an alliance with Cuba this year that would see the parish benefit from scholarships and agricultural technology.
“We’ve had dialogue with the Cuban Embassy with regard to scholarships that we enjoyed back in the day,” Young told The Gleaner.
“Some 15 years ago or more, we were blessed to have had a number of students from St Mary, and Jamaica, who went to Cuba to study medicine, engineering and other areas of educational development and so we are encouraged by a recent linkage with the Cuban ambassador [Inés Fors Fernández] in St Mary,” he added.
“We are now seeking to get those scholarships back to the parish where we can have some of these persons go to Cuba to study in those areas.”
Under the Cuba-Jamaica Bilateral Scholarship Programme, scholarships are available to Jamaican students to study medical sciences and nursing in Cuba.
In May last year, eight students – seven Jamaicans and one Jamaica resident of Cuban heritage – received scholarships, which were to be taken up last September. They were chosen from more than 200 applicants.
BENEFICIAL TO FARMERS
With St Mary considered an agricultural area, Young said an alliance with Cuba could benefit farmers in the parish.
“What they are saying to us is, they have persons who have the technical skills in greenhouse and other areas of agricultural development. They do have farm implements as well and they want to share those best practices with us in Jamaica and we in St Mary want to be on board that venture when they do expose those to us.”
Last year, a prolonged drought severely affected crops in St Mary and led to several bush fires, the combined effect of which saw farmers losing millions of dollars worth of crops.